[METADISCUSSION] Re: No noobs?

[Omer Zak]

On Tue, 2009-02-17 at 02:10 +0200, Micha Feigin wrote:
> On Tue, 17 Feb 2009 01:09:57 +0200
> Dotan Cohen <dotancohen at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > While referring a new Linux user to the Linux-il mailing list, I found
> > this text on the page:
> > "No newbie questions (use gnubies-il instead)."
> > 
> > Can the lists be merged? This list is low enough traffic that doubling
> > it should not be a problem, and the separation of noobs and gurus
> > means that few gurus see the noobs posts, and they never get the help
> > that they need.
> > 
> 
> I have to admit that I didn't even know that list exists, assuming that also a
> few other experienced people. As far as I'm concerned this list is ideal for
> noobs and if you do know what you are doing its a no issue filtering unwanted
> threads.
> 
> You could try to ask them to put noob question in the title so people who
> really don't like help can filter the messages more easily (or add an header
> stating how long the user has been on the list ...)

No, asking newbies to do anything suitable on the title is not helpful.
They usually do not know enough to follow any proper protocol.
The only thing which helps is to refer them to newbies' mailing list and
for us to take turns volunteering to answer there.

I am rather worried that the experts' Linux-IL mailing list will be
swamped by questions like "Why does Linux refuse to execute my Python
script" when it turns out that he did not give it execute permission,
wrote "mypythonscript.py" rather than "./mypythonscript.py" and
misformatted the bang-exclamation line ("#!/usr/bin/python").

                                          --- Omer

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